Bubble humidifiers are common devices used by patients having lung difficulties for humidifying a gas, such as oxygen, before the gas is sent to the patients. Often, patients require daily oxygen treatments, thus it is necessary to humidify the gas so as to prevent drying of the patients mucous membrane. Drying of mucous membranes can cause serious health problems because the patient becomes susceptible to germs, bacteria, and infection. Due to rising costs in the medical industry, many patients are currently administering the oxygen treatments to themselves at home. Hence, the disposable single patient use bubble humidifier has become a commonly purchased product in the home health care industry.
A commonly used disposable single patient use bubble humidifier comprises a container for holding a humidifying liquid, such as water, and a lid for closing the container. The lid includes a gas inlet which is capable of being attached to a gas source, such as oxygen, a means communicating with the gas inlet for transporting the gas into the liquid in the container to cause the gas to become humidified, and a gas outlet which sends the humidified gas via tubing to the patient. These devices also typically include a safety valve which activates to vent excess gas within the container should an obstruction occur in the tubing which feeds the humidified gas to the patient. Typically the lid is threadedly engageable with the container so that water, or humidifying liquid, can be added to the container as the supply therein becomes depleted during use.
Home health care providers often make service calls to their patients should the patients encounter any difficulty with their equipment. In the case of these disposable single patient use bubble humidifiers, unnecessary service calls are being made because the patients have difficulty reassembling the unit after they have added the humidifying liquid to the container. This difficultly is especially prevalent in patients who have physical impairments, such as Arthritis, Parkinson's and the like, that prevent them from manipulating the components of the humidifier, specifically screwing the lid onto the container.
Another disadvantage in the design of the currently used disposable single patient use humidifier is that the patient may not get a sufficient seal between the lid and the container, causing the gas to leak from the container resulting in the patient not receiving their prescribed flow of oxygen deleteriously affecting the patient's long-term health. A further disadvantage is that the patient could accidentally drop the container with the humidifying liquid therein, spilling its contents during reassembly of the unit. Any or all of these disadvantages could be a disincentive for the patient to use the bubble humidifier during their oxygen treatments. This, in turn, can cause other health care problems from infections due to drying out of the patient's mucous membranes.